BFight 210 FPV Racing Quadcopter

Last month, my friends at Gearbest sent me a free KingKong FlyEgg 130 micro drone. I had a lot of trouble with it—a flaky DSMX receiver, a dead FPV camera, and I broke a motor in the first crash. I still want to write about the FlyEgg 130. It is a neat little drone, and I definitely want a 3” drone with an all-up weight of around 120 grams in my bag. Upgraded parts are on the way, so that blog post is probably a couple of weeks away.

Gearbest didn’t have identical, individual replacement parts in stock, and it seemed silly to replace the whole drone. They sent me a free BFight 210 racing quad to try out instead!

The BFight 210

This is a different style of machine than the quad I regularly fly—the Holybro Shuriken X1. Compared to the BFight 210, my Shuriken X1 is heavy and quite powerful. Its expensive T-Motor F40 motors are fantastic, and they have no trouble compensating for the extra weight.

The BFight 210 is about 75 grams lighter than my Shuriken X1. Its motors aren’t as big and powerful, but the BFight 210’s lower weight makes it feel great in the air.

In fact, I couldn’t stop talking about how different it felt while I was flying my first battery on the BFight 210. It feels lighter than the Shuriken X1. The X1 seems like a heavy Corvette with wide tires grabbing hard around the turns, and a huge motor forcing that massive car down the road.

The BFight 210 reminds me of my Miata—it doesn’t need much effort from the tires or the motor to throw its light frame through the corners. That said, the BFight 210 isn’t as far behind the Shuriken X1 as my old Miata was from a Corvette!

The BFight 210 has more modern hardware than my Shuriken X1. The ESCs support DSHOT, and the VTX can be controlled by your transmitter. I’m looking forward to finally being able to test out turtle mode in Betaflight 3.2!

The DSMX version of the BFight 210 is problematic

It was easy enough to follow the directions to pair my Spektrum DX6 to my DSMX BFight 210. The product descriptions clearly states that you can’t change VTX channels from your transmitter unless you’re using a FrSky transmitter. They don’t tell you that a DSMX transmitter will cause your VTX to continuously change channels as fast as it can!

I had to snip the white wire connecting the flight controller to the VTX. I am now able to control the VTX from its push button.

This isn’t the only problem with the DSMX version. The DSMX receiver module that BFight chose to include with the drone has a single antenna, and that short antenna is soldered right to the board. It isn’t even long enough to properly clear the frame. I lost signal for a short time during my first two batteries.

I’ve been running into minor annoyances with my Spektrum DX6 lately. The BFight 210 has given me enough reason to order a Taranis X9D and a handful of R-XSR receiver modules. In a couple of days, I’ll be Spektrum free!

You won’t have either of these problems with your BFight 210 if you’re running FrSky!

The BFight 210 is a budget racing quad

My Shuriken X1 was completely ready to go from the factory, and I expect the same is true of the X1’s replacement—the Holybro Kopis. Both of these drones cost $100 to $150 more than the BFight 210.

You get a lot of drone for your money with the BFight 210, but there are a few inexpensive things that I wish they included in the box.

The BFight 210 comes with a dipole whip antenna. These are quite durable and save you 5 grams of weight, but I was disappointed in my video feed with this antenna. The drone does come with an adapter to connect an RP-SMA antenna, and I installed it as soon as I got home from my first flight session with the BFight 210.

In lieu of a proper battery strap, the BFight 210 ships with a couple of Velcro cable ties. I’m sure they’ll get the job done, but it wouldn’t have cost them much to include a proper battery strap.

Also, my BFight 210 didn’t ship with props. I didn’t plan on using the props that came in the box, but I would have liked to check them out!

I bolted on a set of Racekraft 5046 props. They seem like good propellers for the BFight 210. They feel good, and unlike on my Shuriken X1, they didn’t sag my battery into low voltage warnings until the battery was nearly drained.

The FPV camera

The BFight 210 ships with a generic-looking Sony HS1177 CCD camera. It looks comparable to the CCD camera that shipped with my Shuriken X1. It is a capable camera, but I’m spoiled by my Runcam Eagle 2.

I think the camera is interesting, because it includes a tiny joystick on the back for operating the OSD. I don’t know how easy it would be to use in the field, but at least you don’t have to remember to bring your joystick cable!

The camera is not protected in a crash, and the camera only mounts with two screws. I let my friend Alex have a shot at the controls, and he bumped into some twigs at the top of a small tree. It knocked the camera angle out of whack, and I wasn’t able to tighten it back up with the screws.

This was easy to fix when I got home. I put a small piece of 3M foam mounting tape on each of the carbon fiber camera mounts. It keeps the camera snug, and I don’t expect to have any problems now. At least until I hit a sturdy tree branch head-on!

The 2205 2300kv motors

I am impressed with the FLOVERFLY 2205 motors. Cheap motors are often capable of generating almost as much power as a high-quality motor, but they are often terribly inefficient.

We are using Racerstar 2306S motors on our budget FPV quadcopter kit at TheLab.ms makerspace. They are quite powerful, but they use a lot more power than the T-Motor 2306 motors on my Shuriken X1.

I pushed the BFight 210 a little harder on my second battery—mostly just doing a couple of short punch outs. I was rather tame on my first day of flying, because I was worried about losing signal with the terrible DSMX receiver, and the park was rather crowded. I did a few punch outs to see how much power the motors had.

However, most of my time in the air was spent flying in proximity to trees near the ground. I was also talking to my friends while I was flying, and that always leads to slower flying! I landed my second 1300 mAh battery when it got down to around 3.7v per cell, and it was in the air for over 7 minutes!

That’s about as long as my Shuriken X1 can manage on a gentle flight like that, and the X1’s motors cost more than half of the total price tag of the BFight 210!

The frame

The BFight 210’s frame reminds me of the FLOSS frame. It must be rather light, and it has narrow arms that are each held on by two screws. Everything is packed in near the center, and it sits quite low.

I’m worried about how narrow these arms are. They’re narrow, but at least they’re made from a thick piece of carbon fiber! It took me six months to break an arm on my Shuriken X1, but those arms are more than twice as wide.

I haven’t been able to find replacement frame parts for the BFight 210. This worries me a bit, but not a lot. If I do break an arm, there are plenty of inexpensive frames available from Gearbest or Banggood.

I’ll report back when I manage to break the frame!

I love and hate 4-in-1 ESCs

The BFight 210 ships with a 30 amp 4-in-1 ESC module that support bl_heli_s and DSHOT. It works great, and a 4-in-1 ESC is easier to work with and tidies up the build quite nicely.

There is a downside to using a 4-in-1 unit. If you blow out one ESC, you have to replace all four. Our group burns up ESCs on a regular basis. Sometimes they burn out in a crash when the propeller rips chips right off the top of the ESC. Thankfully, this won’t happen with a 4-in-1 ESC!

I burned out an ESC on my KingKong FlyEgg 130. The motor than I bent in my first crash fried the ESC a few batteries later, so now I’m waiting for a replacement 4-in-1 board.

At the rate things are going, it looks like everyone will be using 4-in-1 ESCs in the future. So I guess I can’t complain too much!

The OMNIBUS F3 flight controller

I am a fan of the OMNIBUS F3. I recently used an OMNIBUS F3 Pro in a 4” quad build, and that led to us using them in 10 FPV quadcopter kits at TheLab.ms makerspace. They’re inexpensive, they have plenty of UARTs, and they’re fairly easy to work with.

My only complaint in my own builds is wiring up the current sensor. When BFight builds the drone for me, I don’t have to worry about that!

The VTX

If you have a FrSky transmitter, you can control your VTX settings from your transmitter. This is quite handy. It would be better if it were one of the VTX modules that’s compatible with Betaflight, but the BFight 210 is a few months too old for that to have worked out.

I can’t use my transmitter to control the VTX, so I have to hit the little button hiding inside the frame. It will be tough to reach that button in the field, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to decipher the LEDs when they’re hiding inside the frame, either.

That said, it is a switchable 25/200/600mw video transmitter—I wish my Shuriken X1 could be set as low as 25mw! It seems to do its job quite well.

BFight 210 vs Holybro Kopis!

I’ve probably put more than a hundred of battery packs through my Shuriken X1, and it has served me well. I’ve been comparing the BFight 210 to my X1 all throughout this blog post. It is an easy comparison for me to make, but it probably isn’t all that useful for you. The Holybro Shuriken X1 is getting harder to find. Holybro seems to have replaced the X1 with the Kopis racing quad.

Everyone has been saying good things about the Kopis. It is lighter than the X1, has more modern electronics, but it has less powerful motors. The X1 has more power than I need anyway, and it sounds like the Kopis flies like a dream.

Unlike the BFight 210, the Kopis and the X1 both use top-of-the-line parts. Do you need those more costly parts? The Kopis is a better drone than the BFight 210 in every way except price. Is that premium hardware worth an extra $150?

The answer to those questions will be different for everyone. For me, my BFight 210 is probably going to be my backup quad. If I smoke an ESC or break an arm on my Shuriken X1, I’ll pack it up and fly the rest of my batteries on the BFight 210.

If my Shuriken X1 fell into a lake today, I think I would come home and order a Holybro Kopis. The Kopis is light like the BFight 210, but it is sturdier, more powerful, and more efficient. It also has a nicer VTX module that integrates with Betaflight.

If you’re on a limited budget, or you’re buying your first FPV racer, then the BFight 210 might be a good fit for you.

Standard components

The BFight 210 uses standard components in its 30.5mm stack. If you break your ESCs, flight controller, or VTX, you can find suitable replacements or upgrades without much trouble.

This has been my biggest complaint about my Shuriken X1. It uses a single, custom circuit board for the PDB, flight controller, and VTX. The X1’s frame doesn’t have standard 30.5 mm mounting points. If one component on that board goes, everything needs to be replaced.

I can’t sneak in a newer F4 flight controller into my Shuriken X1, because it just won’t fit. They’ve corrected this with the Kopis!

The verdict

If you made it to my blog, you’re probably already interested in buying a BFight 210, and you’re trying to decide whether or not you should pull the trigger. I think it is a fine drone. It has plenty of power, it flies smoothly, and it feels so light in the air. I don’t think you’ll regret buying one.

The BFight 210 feels like it has 80 percent of the performance of my Shuriken X1, but at a little more than half the price. It is a very good value, and in reality, the BFight 210 is more drone than I can handle. If you’re new to FPV flying, or you’re as much of a rookie as I am, the BFight 210 will be plenty of racing drone for you.

That said, I love the extra power of the Shuriken X1. The other day, I was ripping around the park with the BFight 210. Then I fired up the X1, and as soon as I took off, I did a big punch out. There were a few dozen kids nearby participating in soccer practice, and I heard a whole bunch of them hooting and hollering when they heard the X1 rip into the sky.

The Shuriken X1 always gets attention from a crowd. They barely noticed the BFight 210. Partly because it isn’t as fast, and partly because it isn’t as loud!

The BFight 210 has some interesting competition at the same price point. I keep hearing good things about the Furibee X215. There should be one on the way to my friend Brian, but they seem to be having trouble keeping them in stock. I’m sure he’ll let me try it out when it gets here. I’ll be sure to report back.

The BFight 210 has its problems, but they’re all minor. You can upgrade the VTX antenna and battery strap for less than ten dollars, so I wouldn’t let that hold you back.

Are you flying a BFight 210? What do you think of it? Would you recommend it to others? Let us know in the comments!